


Driving Home For Christmas

by Kru



Series: against all odds [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Smut, Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, James doesn't know how to talk, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Moneypenny fixes all, Q is a little stubborn shit, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:18:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kru/pseuds/Kru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond and Q still haven't mastered the art of communication. And it's Christmas Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving Home For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheExplodingPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheExplodingPen/gifts).



> So I'm taking a part in this amazing thing called **[00q New Year Party](http://00qnewyearparty.tumblr.com/)** which is an exchange of gifts among 00Q fandom.
> 
> I got a prompt: Bond and Q still haven't mastered the art of communication from lovely **[TheExplodingPen](http://theexplodingpen.tumblr.com/)** , thus this fic is purely for her pleasure but I hope all of you would enjoy it a little bit too :D
> 
> The fic is beta'ed by a really talented and extraordinary girl who made this text readable and flowing. **[Linnet](http://the-midnight-blogger.tumblr.com/)** , I don't know what I'd have done without you... Probably I'd just go to cry in the corner :)
> 
> Comments and reflections are always welcome ^^

The silence was devastating. It was so complete and so overwhelming that he could almost taste it. It spread through the empty, dark rooms like a mist, sneaking into the building along with the coming of the night. The lights throughout the whole of MI6 were dimmed as most of employees had gone home earlier, rushing to spend Christmas with their loved ones. There were only a few people left, only the most essential minimum of Staff. It seemed that during Christmas everything was magically postponed and even terrorists were taking some time off. Well, most of the terrorists, at least…

Q groaned with dissatisfaction, letting his head drop on the soft back of his chair. He ducked his head lazily, focusing on the snowflakes that were slowly falling outside the window of his office. From this point he might see the massive body of the Houses of Parliament, lit up with a warm glow and softened on the edges because of the misty air.  Everything around was covered with a delicate layer of fresh snow, muted by this gentle cover like a fur coat. 

He was stuck here for the whole night, and the worst part of it was that he had agreed to do this all by himself. As a head of the Q-Branch he wasn’t even being considerate for taking a shift on Christmas’ Eve. He had done a dozen of them when he was a new-starter or a junior technician. Now he was supposed to have the privilege of taking this day off but… Yes, there were always 'ifs' and 'buts', especially if someone had chosen to be with a double-oh agent. That was complicating a lot of things. Actually, that was complicating everything.

He thought that he finally would get to have a normal Christmas. He'd never had something like that before. When he was a kid, his parents were atheists and they had treated these holidays like another global, commercial disease. His sister wasn’t one to argue with them; she would never oppose their will. So they didn’t have presents, a Christmas tree or even a special time that they would spend only together. Maybe for that reason, when he got into university he didn’t think of coming home for holidays. He was the only one that had stayed in the dorm, working his arse off to finish all projects before the end of a semester. Then his parents died, he got a job at MI6 which came with the protection and comfort of this institution, and he just forgot about some of the trivial things like Christmas. He didn’t have a single person with whom he would really want to be at this time of the year, so he had been choosing the company of his inventions instead. They were more compassionate than the rest of the people anyway. And probably that would never change… Maybe he would have ended up like the previous head of the Q-Branch, dying in the office, if he hadn't meet this one person… This one person who had turned his world upside down.

He met Bond, James Bond. A fucking double-oh agent with the most stupid, charming smile and the most skilled, amazing hands that Q had ever felt. And he fell in love with that bastard. Well, to be honest… He’d loved him a long time ago, but he only got up the courage to take what he wanted a couple of months ago when he was on a mission with Bond. It was in a small Italian town, in a house in the mountains. Q had heard back then that he was loved, that he was needed and desired.

And here he was… After six months Q was sitting alone in his office because he was a coward again. He wanted to spend this time with James. He really wanted to. He had bought him a present, done a grocery shop and decorated the tree before he realized that he didn’t know if the agent would want the same… Bond hated things like that. Bond was all passion and desire with the occasional bit of romantic, silly gestures. But when it came to sentiment… He hated it.

Q knew that James would find a quick, small operation to lead or maybe some paperwork that had to be done on Christmas. And Q didn’t wanted to be the one disappointed, to be the one waiting alone at home, eating an instant pudding from Marks and Spencer in front of the telly (or his laptop for that matter). He told Bond that he had taken the shift before the man could even come up with an excuse for not staying with him.

And of course Bond had left a couple of hours ago for Beirut where he got a sudden assignment to lead an operation of four other agents. The case popped up in the last hour and while maybe Bond wasn’t necessarily needed there, he went anyway.  Q, on the other hand, bit his lips hard whenever he thought that he could at least talk to the man and tried to tell him what he really wanted.

God, he was so pathetic, he thought, suddenly hearing the distant but familiar click of high heels. Q turned his head at the same time as the woman pushed the glass door open.

“Moneypenny, what on earth are you doing here?” Q asked with a tired voice, straightening on the chair and pressing some key on his custom keyboard to restore his main computer to life.

“I should ask you the same question,” she said, with a smile on her perfectly red lips, coming closer and sitting on the rim of his desk next to her tossed coat. “And please don’t pretend that you have work. I know there is less than none.”

“I’m waiting for 007 to call in,” Q said matter-of-factly. “He's supposed to land in Beirut just about now.”

“Really?” Eve quirked an eyebrow up at him, crossing her arms across her chest while she summed him up again. “I have a direct order to send you home. Immediately.”

“What? No way,” Q snorted, shaking his head in disagreement. “No, Mallory would never tell me to go home if I said I’m needed here. And really, I need to give to Bond direction once he reaches his point. The man cannot go a yard without me.”

“That I do confirm,” Eve huffed out a laugh as she started to look for something in her bag. “But I’m afraid that the only thing you’re going to give him is this.” She finally took out an envelope and a small, golden box tied with a crimson red ribbon.

“What do you mean by that?” He reached for the box but she held it higher, out of his reach.

“This is a present for _him_ ,” she stated, jumping off the desk so that Q wouldn’t be able to catch her. “And for you. From all of us…That is from me, Tanner and Mallory. You’ll open this only when you’re at home. There is no instruction inside but I know you’re a clever boy so you’ll figure out what to do with it.”

“You’re insane, you know that?” Q asked with disbelief hidden in his tone when she finally placed the box on top of his keyboard.

“There were a few people who might have called me that before,” she admitted more seriously. “But they ended up pretty nasty so you’d better follow my words. Oh, and if you still don’t believe me, then here you go,” she added, giving him the envelope.

Q opened it quickly, reading a few lines of text with a growing astonishment. “Mallory has sent me a written order to make sure I’ll go home?”

Eve shrugged, still smiling innocently when she gathered her stuff and walked to the door. She stopped at the last moment, poking her head through the half opened glass. “I’d advise you to talk to Bond next time. He isn’t that bad at it as you might think,” she said with a wink and disappeared on the staircase.

“But what I’m supposed to do alone at home?” He almost whined, falling back into the chair.  

*

Bond got in the car together with a gust of the wind, letting hordes of snowflakes inside. He tossed them off of his coat, watching as they melted on the leather seat. The driver ran the car without asking for directions, knowing exactly where to take him. He dropped Bond off at the City airport just a few hours ago, and now he was taking him back.

The agent growled at the back of his throat, thinking about this wasted time. He let his head to drop on the back of the car’s seat, allowing himself to sink in. The inside was filled up with the pleasant hum of a Christmas song and the far noises of the city, muted by bulletproof glass. He was watching quickly changing scenarios outside the window, wondering what the hell he was going to do this evening.

Driving home for Christmas, that was what the guy with a husky voice was singing now on the radio. Home… For a long time Bond hadn't known what that meant. London was his home but only in a sense of place. There was nothing attached to it apart from a feeling of responsibility for his country and patriotism. He had spent a fair share of his life outside of this city, hence why he didn’t have many memories related to it. He didn’t spend Christmas here either, always trying to get an assignment that would allow him to forget about this time of year. He liked that one restaurant on Regent Street and he had his favorite spot to run at Hyde Park but that was it.

Now every place that the agent saw outside the window was reminding him of the man that taught him all these feelings anew. Besides that, Bond had someone to whom he wanted to return or rather with whom he wanted to stay. He would never have thought that it would happen to him, but he was in love with that man. No, correct that, he was insanely in love with that little, clever smartarse.

Bond didn’t even try to lie to himself about how much he wanted. He wanted to give Q everything. He even wanted to spend this time of the year with him, maybe finally making some good memories out of it: staying in bed for three long days and exchanging those more physical gifts. Hell, he had even bought Q a real present, planning to give it to him at the Christmas morning when James would wake him up with his lips and hands.

None of this was meant to happen though. A week ago Q had announced that he was going to do a Christmas shift at Q-Branch because one of his minions had some family problems, a mother at the hospital or whatever…  All in all, Q didn’t plan to stay at home and Bond wouldn’t be such a good agent if he didn't have this slight suspicion that Q wasn’t taking this shift only to be a Good Samaritan.

So what did James do? Did he talk to Q? No… What would he do that for? He knew how stubborn Q could be sometimes.

Bond went to Mallory instead to beg him for any assignment that would take place on Christmas Eve. And really, Bond had never begged before. Sometimes he was asking, threatening, or blackmailing but never begging. And now all he wanted was to hear Q inside his ear when he was on the job. If he couldn’t have him in bed, at least he would have him like that.

So yeah, he was a bit desperate. And maybe pathetic. But he was allowed to be so because everyone already knew that Bond was a maniac when it came to things that fascinated him or things that were his. Mallory must already have learnt that not letting James doing thing his own way wasn’t paying off. He agreed to send Bond to Beirut without a single comment about their little drama. And everything was supposed to be perfect, or at least a bit perfect if it had not been for the fact that when Bond landed in Lebanon, there was an order waiting for him to come back.

“We are here, Sir,” his driver interrupted his thoughts, stopping the car in front of a tenement house built from red brick.

Bond smiled at the man, catching his gaze in the mirror. “Thank you, Gabriel. Go home and wish your wife a happy Christmas.”

“Thank you, sir. I will,” the driver added before Bond stepped out of the car.

James’ apartment was on the highest floor, taking up the whole space of the attic. When he entered it, he stepped in the silence and darkness that was interrupted only by the low whistle of the decoding alarm. He walked to the open kitchen, tossing off the shoes in the corner of the hall and leaving his coat on the sofa.

He was willing to bet there was a whole bottle of Macallan in the top drawer. If he couldn’t spend that night with Q, at least he could open some fine whiskey.

He left the lights off, reaching for the alcohol. The liquid shone in the bottle as the light of the streetlamps played on the glass. Bond put it on the countertop behind his gun and documents, wanting to look for a glass, when he saw something strange.

There was a small box, glittering golden in the light coming from outside. It was open and empty. Bond reached for his gun with an automatic movement and took the box, turning it in his fingers while he carefully looked around. And there was more strange evidence of someone being at the house – a small, white card left on the kitchen floor. He bent for it and then noticed something more. A wide, red ribbon spread on the floor, leading him inside the apartment with its crimson tract.

“For James,” he read the card aloud, intrigued.

Not leaving his gun, he followed the ribbon. The defined path guided him behind the corner, then to the bathroom where he saw a weak light through the glass of the closed door. Smirking at that, he opened the door gently, suddenly seeing that the space was filled up with a subtle light of just a few candles and a cloud of steam that floated lazily above the bathtub. In there, in the mist and foam, Q lay with his eyes closed, his body gleaming in the dimmed light. The illumination from the candles slid across his wet skin, over his slender lines and all the way up to his legs, which were comfortably rested on the bathtub’s rim. One of his ankles was also the point where the ribbon ended, tied onto Q’s leg with a big, crimson bow.

“How do you like Moneypenny’s present?” Q asked, smiling but not opening his eyes.

Bond stepped inside, leaving the gun on the closest shelf. He tossed the suit jacket off his shoulders, leaving it on the floor. He reached for the shirt’s buttons and sat on the rim of the bathtub.

“I wasn’t expecting one,” he said, letting the shirt slide from his arms and fall to the ground next to the jacket. "It wasn't you, that's for sure."

Q opened his eyes lazily, smiling with pleasure when his gaze met James’. “I got a direct order from Mallory to talk to you.”

“You too?” Bond hummed a low laugh, reaching with his hand to the water's surface. “Although, the talk needs to wait.”

“Why is that?” Q murmured, rising a bit in the bath.

The man smiled, this time with some kind of promise. “Because now I’ll try my gift.”

James’ fingers slowly dipped into the foam, stroking Q’s skin gently. His fingertips ran along the young man’s thigh with lingering movements. Q reacted to the touch instantly, arching in the water and murmuring something with appreciation. Bond’s gaze never left Q’s eyes, as his hand reached down to the bow and untied it in one smooth motion. 

*

The bathroom was filled up not only with steam and dense air but also with the sound of their heavy breathing. The sound eased out slowly as the minutes passed, replaced only by calm silence. The candles were almost burnt out completely, leaving the room doused in shadow.

Q drenched the sponge with foam, starting to rub it gently onto the massive shoulders of the other man. Bond set up comfortably between his thighs, resting his head on Q’s wet chest. Closing his eyes, he smiled at the younger man. He stroked Q’s skin with the same gentle rhythm, running his fingers down Q’s calves that were enclosed around his body and reaching higher with every move. Bond stopped this tender endearment only when Q’s hands smoothed over one particular spot on his arm. He stopped the young man’s hand with his own, pressing it to his skin.

“I like this one,” he said suddenly, turning a bit to get a better look at Q’s face.

“The one that I stitched by myself?” Q asked, leaning to kiss Bond’s palm. “It looks terrible.”

“It looks perfect,” James murmured, holding his head up so he could catch Q’s lips in a soft kiss. “You’re perfect.”

“Do you know, that was almost a half a year ago?” Q muttered into Bond’s lips.

The agent let himself enjoy another kiss, biting into the younger man’s lips with more force than before. When they parted, he breathed out, “Five months, twenty seven days and… Fifteen hours.”

Q snorted out a quiet laugh. “Who would have thought that of the two of us, you’d be the one counting?”

“It is as surprising as the fact that you didn’t want to spend Christmas with me,” Bond asked suddenly, changing his tone into a more serious one. “Why is that Q, hm?"

Q’s other hand, that had been continuing the slow massage, stopped. The Quartermaster shrugged lightly, dropping his gaze. “I thought that you’d hate it... that maybe it would remind you of her and all of the Christmases you didn’t get the chance to have.”

“Idiot,” Bond smirked, reaching for Q’s face. He took his chin in his fingers, forcing the man to look at him again. “We should have more sex, because you start to talk bollocks when you don't get enough.”

Q wanted to say something, and maybe came back with some repartee, but Bond’s fingers stopped him, touching his lips gently.

“I like this scar. I like that _you_ were the one who stitched it,” Bond started, quietly. “Everything what I had done in my life before I met you, I did selfishly. My whole body is marked with selfish scars but this one. It reminds me what I’ve done for you… What I’m willing to do again.”

“You saved my life,” Q whispered, pressing his lips to the inside of Bond’s hand. “And you could have been killed. Why do you want to remember that?”

“Because there is no me without you,” Bond answered with a faint smile. “This is my gift to you for Christmas. I’m yours.”

Q nodded slowly in silent agreement. He let James’ lips travel across his skin, up to his half opened mouth. The man bit on Q's neck with hunger and this never stopping need. He liked that… No, he loved it. Q loved that sometimes Bond smelt like blood and gunpowder. He loved all the memories of the past hidden in this man, documented on his body with scars. He loved that Bond had his ghosts, and that sometimes he was like a wild animal, looking for a place to hide or for a distraction. It was okay. Q could give him all that. Because he was Bond’s and Bond was his. 


End file.
